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I am a failure.

How often do we feel this way? When things aren’t going my way or the way I think they should be going I feel like a failure. When I am at my lowest I become very critical of myself. This is true for many things in my life. My most recent “failure” has been potty training my son. Intellectually, I know that I have not failed and that each child is different. I know this but I can’t help it, I slip up often and have little pity parties in my head. I wrote about potty training here and since then we had a good few days and then he decided he wanted nothing to do with the potty. Naturally, I keep trying to figure out why. He had only positive experiences with the potty and he enjoyed the sticker chart we were doing. His refusal is without tears, just very matter of fact. I suspect that this is not entirely unusual and I’ve responded by easing up a bit and bringing up the potty every few days.

Another struggle we are having relates to sleep. Diego is not fond of getting into bed these days. He doesn’t want to go to sleep and his refusal has him rejecting books as well. They are so tied into our bedtime routine that his disdain has not spared them. It’s annoying to deal with because bedtime is now a longer process that has me or my husband sitting in his room until he falls asleep. If we leave he gets out of bed. We’ve tried a lot of different things and so far nothing has worked. He has also been waking up during the night, something that he did not do just a few months ago. Whatever this phase is about I am ready for it to end. I’m coping by continuing to be consistent with our routine and I walk him back to bed and tuck him in when he wakes up at 2am and do so again and again on nights with multiple wakings.

I can’t lie and say that I don’t feel myself becoming angry at times. It is NOT easy to keep your cool while sleep deprived and the urge to raise my voice or even (gasp) smack him has cropped up. It ashamed me to admit it and that’s ok, I am human. There is no shame in being weak and finding ourselves in these situations where our patience is tested to its limits. I am not a fan of pretending that parenting is all rainbows and unicorns. No child is perfect and people can pretend that they birthed little angels but those angels have horns sometimes, haha. I’m not a perfect parent.

Diego is a very sweet boy and I have to admit that I have very few reasons to complain but he’s a two year old who is still not in control of his emotions etc, so of course he’s going to have bad days! It’s part of growing up. I’m growing up right along with him.

During the past couple of months I have not been posting here consistently and this is another source of feelings of failure. I don’t really know why. I decided to write this blog for me and I still write it for myself but I do enjoy sharing. I especially treasure the messages I get from people who read and reach out to me. BookFridays got away from me. I am about 8 books behind and this stresses me out. I got out of the habit of writing a post right after I finished a book and now I feel like it all got away from me. I plan on getting back on track but there are times when I berate myself for falling off my schedule.

I am a failure is this toxic, destructive mantra that we all need to fight against. I would say we need to get rid of it but I think it’s ok to be low, and feel down. It’s ok to give into those feelings every now and then. That’s human. I also think we need to be kind to ourselves and be forgiving. It’s so much easier to talk others up but when it comes to ourselves we reserve the harshest judgment. We kick ourselves when we are down and we tell ourselves the very worst lies about our worth. Even at our lowest we all have things to look back on and be proud of and feel stronger. Most of all, we are worthy of love, friendship, happiness and success always.

I 100% relate to you about the feelings you write about here. I bet you feel guilty for airing them too, right. Such a horrible mindset isn’t it. It might not help, but you’re definitely not alone. For me what these feelings tend to boil down to is when I’m feeling bored & unchallenged in myself – and by that I mean out with the parenting sphere & usually in respect of where I want to be with my writing despite my busy life of mothering. Quite often at my worst, it heralds the start of renewed drive to move forward. But it never feels like that at my lowest point. I get so frustrated. Sleep deprivation is the root of all evil in my view and its also amazing what a change in that will do for one’s mood. Sending hugs in the hope that sunshine is on the horizon x

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About Me

I am a reader, blogger, and cookie recipe enthusiast. As a recovering phoboc, I spend a lot of time talking about anxiety and how it affects my life. I like to share experiences, perspectives, inspiration, and photographs.